XVIII. Forte de Copacabana

Aiming at providing answers to the following question “Does no war mean peace?”, lecturers have characterized the current conjuncture as challenging to actors responsible for global security. Despite traditional conflicts such as terrorism, narcotrafficking, and military and arms hegemony dispute, speakers pointed out the emergence and growing complexity of new threats such as the control and management of data and information in cyberspace, hacker attacks to critical infrastructure remotely controlled and the fluidity in the way these criminal groups organize and act.

            The event has counted with a number of high level specialists from Latin America and the European Union. Among other invited highly praised speakers, the Conference have profit from the participation of the Minister of Defense of Germany, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, the Minister of Defense of Uruguay Javier García Duchini, the Secretary General of the European External Action Service of the EU, Stefano Sannino and the Rear-Admiral of the Brazilian Ministry of Defense, Guilherme Mattos de Abreu. Divided in four moments, the lecturers have presented a series of issues related to civil-military relations, multilateralism and the role of transnational security alliances, and, in the end, the cyber responses to crisis situations.

            Even though the absence of war does not mean peace, todays context presents an increasingly disputed ambient, which posits new challenges to policy and decision makers. In such scenario, cooperation and the strengthening of multilateral instances are presented as possible and necessary strategies that can help to guarantee stability and global security.

             It is important to underline that, in spite of being an online event, compromise of the organizers in making the conference as welcoming as possible. We have invested in a professional video recording studio where a professional journalist, the master of ceremony, interacted with the virtual audience, the guests and the general public watching through the online platform.

            The feedback from the public and the engagement was extremely positive. Counting the registration of people from more than 40 different countries and having more than 2200 accesses during the live transmission, we were thrilled to observe  a strong participation of the audience in the chat, a number of dynamics and quizzes that took place during the presentations. The audience profited from the whole interactive environment specially exposing their personal impressions and posing questions that were filtered by the moderators of the panels to engage with the lecturers.

            We trust that XVIII Forte de Copacabana International Security Conference has achieved the goal to gather in the same space, different perspectives from those who think and act directly in this global dimension, promoting a fundamental debate of issues related to international security.